“You had work of your own to do back on Yavin.” Cray met his eyes gravely, her brown gaze almost on level with his own. “Yet you came here with us.”
“You don’t know what’s out there, Luke.” Nichos put a hand on Luke’s arm. “Between the warlords and Grand Admiral wannabes of the various parts of the Imperial Fleet, and whatever Princes of the Ancient Houses in the Senex Sector who think they can grab a piece of power … they’re coming up with new things all the time. Request Umwaw Moolis to get you a bigger ship.”
The Outer Rim. Many years ago Luke had described his homeworld of Tatooine—one of the worlds in that very sparsely settled and marginally habitable region of the galaxy—as the point that was farthest from the bright center of the universe, with considerable accuracy. He had since visited places beside which Tatooine looked like Coruscant during Carnival Week, but his original definition would still hold up … and the same could be said for most of the rest of the Outer Rim as well.
Swollen crimson suns circled by frozen balls of methane and ammonia. Hot-burning blue stars whose light and heat crisped their planets to cinders. Pulsars whose orbiting worlds alternately froze and melted and clusters so filled with ambient radiation as to cook out any possibility of life on whatever bodies weren’t torn apart by the conflicting gravitational fields.
Everywhere in the galaxy were a lot of empty planets, balls of rock and metals too expensive to exploit because of heat, or gravity, or radiation, or proximity to strange hazards like gas cauldrons or fluctuating anomalies. As Leia had said to Cray, distances in space were vast, and it was easy to lose or forget about whole systems, whole sectors, if there was no reason to go there. In the Outer Rim, the Empire had never bothered much with local law.
The armored explorer-cruiser Huntbird the Ithorians had lent to Luke came out of hyperspace a healthy distance from the luminous zone of dust and ionized gases listed on the starcharts as the Moonflower Nebula.
“Are you sure that’s what the random coordinates were for?” asked Cray doubtfully, studying the readouts of all information on the area on the three screens immediately beneath the bridge’s main viewport. “It isn’t even listed in the Registry. Might the coordinates have been for System K Seven Forty-nine, for instance? That’s only a few parsecs away, and at least there’s a planet there—Pzob …” She read off the screen. “Human-habitable and temperate … the Empire could have had a base there, though there’s none listed.”
“It’s habitable,” agreed Luke, tapping through instructions on the keypad with one hand and keeping an eye on the changing images on the central screen as he spoke. “But it was colonized way, way back in the days by Gamorreans, goodness only knows how or why. Anybody wanting a permanent base there would have had to spend a fortune in security.”
“A most unpleasant people, Gamorreans,” agreed Threepio primly from the bench seat he shared with Nichos in the passenger area of the bridge. “They were difficult enough to deal with in the entourage of Jabba the Hutt.… Procedures programs for visiting Gamorr consist of a single line: DO NOT VISIT GAMORR. Really!”
“I don’t know …” Luke studied the viewscreen ahead of them. The reflective veils of dust picked up the light of surrounding stars, and glowed from within to indicate that somewhere in that vastness two or three stars were concealed, their rays diffused by the all-encompassing gases so that almost nothing could be seen. “Readings show a lot of rocks in there.”
He touched a switch, and a schematic manifested itself on one of the small screens. On it the zone was thickly speckled with what looked like grains of sand and pebbles held in uneasy random suspension.
“Asteroid field,” he said. “Looks like all sizes. Usual iron-nickel composition. May be a belt going all around one of the stars in there … I wonder if the Empire ever did any mining?”
“It would cost a fortune, wouldn’t it?” asked Nichos, getting up to step close and look down over their shoulders.
Luke flipped through screen after screen, studying mass readings, spectrographic analyses, local gravitational fields, while all the time the glowing, shifting wall of light drew nearer, so bright that its soft colors streamed from the viewscreen over the faces of those grouped around the console. “It would help if I knew what I was looking for. Whoa, looks like we got something in there …”
He accelerated gently into the first outstringers of the veils of light. Colors swirled and drifted, chunks of rock the size of office blocks on Coruscant floating suddenly out of dustbanks and sandbars of brilliance, so that Luke had to maneuver slowly among them. “There we go.” He toggled a switch, and before them they made out the shape of a cold gray worldlet, seemingly embedded in veils of chilly whites and greens, pitted with holes in which old crane arms and landing cradles could be seen.
“A base of some kind,” said Luke. “Probably mining, but it looks like scavengers have been at it for scrap and whatever parts they could float away.”
“I’m surprised anybody bothered.” Cray peered around his arm for a better view. “Can we get a readout on the rocks around us? With all the interference we’re getting from the magnetic and ion fields of the dust cover, this would be a swell place to hide.”
“I’m not picking up anything, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing here.” Luke thumbed the viewer to show a couple of the larger rocks, in the nine-kilometer range, but ionization from the nebula’s electrical fields blanked anything much out of visual range. “Let’s have a look around.”
Cray continued to flip through the readouts and specs while Luke guided the Huntbird through the glowing mazes of veils, light, and stones. Few pilots would even venture into asteroid fields—the appearance of languid drift was an unsafe illusion to bank on. Even Luke was wary of them. Most of the asteroids were the size of the vessel or larger, too big to be shuffled away by the deflectors. The ship’s mere movement was sufficient to cause gravitational ripples and swirls in the uneasy equilibrium of the field. The field itself was enormous, the fritzed-out sensor pickup showing more and more rocks. Almost certainly a planetary belt, thought Luke. It would take days to explore it in even the most cursory fashion.
And yet …
Every instinct he possessed told him there was something there. Or near there, and one look at the readouts told him there wasn’t anything near there but there. They passed close to a massive ball of rock, almost sixty kilometers through, and under the shadows of its flank Luke glimpsed more holes and the remains of a self-erecting dome. Another installation, a big one this time. Clearly deserted, but …
Why two mines?
Or were mines what they were?
“They have any readings for mining activity in this area?”
Nichos, who had quietly taken his place at the computer station, tapped the keyboard for a moment, then said, “There’re no observation posts anywhere in this sector. Funny,” he added. “No records of any mining having gone on anywhere near here at all.”
“Can you pick up any antimatter trails?” asked Luke, steering the Huntbird around a tight mass of large asteroids that had drifted into one another’s gravitational proximity and now clung together, bumping and scraping with the silent, stupid clumsiness of ex-spouses at a party. “Hyperdust? Any sign of ships coming through here at all?”
“Trails would dissipate in a few weeks,” Cray reminded him, checking anyway. “Nothing. Drat this interference. We—”
“Shields!” yelled Luke, slamming his hand on the deflectors and wondering—in the same split second that something impacted with the explorer like the crushing fist of some vengeful demon—if he was crazy …
Purple-white light rammed through the viewport with an almost physical force, leaving blindness and the sickening jolt of the gravity going out. Light again, as a second plasma bolt smashed the ship in the same instant that Luke swung the helm. He smelled burning insulation and heard a sizzle, then Cray’s cursing. She had a startling line of profanity for someone that proper and controlled. A
s his eyes readjusted he saw that most of the board in front of him was black.
“Where are they coming from?” The readouts weren’t telling him.
“Sector two, back behind—”
“There!”
Luke had already begun to whip the vessel into another yaw, hoping his impression was correct that that area wasn’t occupied by an asteroid, and from the tail of his eye saw the white sword of light stab out from an enormous asteroid that had, until seconds ago, indeed been in their rear.
“Get a fix on it!”
“Look out!”
“Oh, dear!” That was Threepio, as the Internal Systems Console to his right exploded into a geyser of sparks. Luke barely noticed, for the next plasma bolt splintered a meteorite and showered the ship with several thousand superheated cannonballs.
“There’s nothing on the surface!” yelled Cray over the crackle of shorting wires. “No domes, no emplacements, I can’t even see gunports …” He wondered that she could see anything in the nebula’s weird, shadowless light. “There’s holes all over the thing—”
“Watch it!” Luke spun the vessel, whipped behind another hunk of rock and ice, praying he wasn’t diving straight into the attacker’s gunsights. Except for size, every asteroid in the field looked almost exactly like every other asteroid, and unless it was actually shooting at them it was nearly impossible to tell on which of the half dozen one-to-two-kilometer rocks immediately visible in the universe of glowing dust the guns were situated. The asteroid behind which the Huntbird had ducked took a terrible hit, only its size preventing it from splintering as the smaller one had; it blocked the attackers from view.
“I’ve got a fix …”
“It’ll be inaccurate in two seconds.” Luke ran a hasty systems check. He was peripherally aware of the dig of his safety harness into his shoulders and hips; if internal gravity was failing probably heat and air were out, too. “We’re getting out of here.”
“Aft starboard sensors blind,” reported Nichos, hanging on to the safety handle by the crippled data console. His feet were off the floor. “Deflectors one-third power …”
Luke maneuvered carefully along the line of sight behind the shielding asteroid, fighting the helm’s drift to port, which told him the stabilizer was out. He didn’t even have to key the readout to know the vessel wouldn’t make hyperspace. “How far to Pzob?”
“Three or four hours at top sublight,” reported Cray. She sounded grim but not scared, though this was her first time under fire. Good, Luke thought, for a young woman who’d gone straight from the schoolroom to the lecture room with no stops in between. “That’s just guessing. I’ve got a helm bearing but I can’t get an exact distance.”
“Our sublight engines seem to be okay,” said Luke. “We’ll be on emergency oxygen and we’ll probably be pretty cold by the time we get there. Threepio, I hope you know Gamorrean.”
Threepio said, “Oh, dear.”
“Course seems to be clear all around.” Cray toggled through the setting a second time, though the navicomp screen was fritzing in and out of focus. If they lost that, thought Luke, they were really down a hole.
No further shots from the asteroid base. Nevertheless his scalp prickled, and he laid the course for the longest line of sight he could to keep the asteroid between him and where he figured the base was.
“Right,” he said softly. “Let’s make hyperdust.”
The Huntbird had just started to move when a bolt of ionized plasma hit the shielding asteroid like the hammer of Death. Rocks, energy, heat slammed into the explorer vessel like monstrous shrapnel. Luke felt the safety harness that held him tear loose with the violence of the impact: Cray screamed, and he was grabbed by darkness.
Chapter 4
Luke came to long enough to throw up, not a pleasant occurrence in zero-g. Two See-Threepios unhooked him from the safety harness in which he floated and steered him—with surprising nimbleness for a droid who always seemed so carefully balanced—out of the small cubicle and into what he thought was the aft crew room before he passed out once more.
The Force, he thought. Got to use the Force.
Why?
Because your lungs have stopped working.
It took an astonishing amount of concentration to inhale again, and it hurt a lot more than he’d thought it would. A little later he wondered if he could use the Force to do something about the crazed bantha that seemed to be trapped inside his skull and trying to ram its way out.
It occurred to him the next time he came to—the cold woke him, that time—that he probably had a concussion.
“Luke,” said Cray, and now she sounded scared. “Luke, you’ve got to wake up!”
He knew she was probably right.
The Force, he thought again. Cilghal, his Calamarian student, had taught him enough about the specific physiological mechanism of concussions that he knew exactly where to bring the Force to bear, though it was a little like trying to take off a glove one-handed. His lungs felt as if he’d inhaled a sand drill and neglected to turn it off. No wonder breathing hadn’t been a lot of fun.
Increased blood flow to the capillaries to clear the impurities. Accelerated healing to the cells of that rioting squadron of drunken Gamorreans that had formerly been his brain.
Opening his eyes, he worked on consolidating both Crays into the single individual he was pretty sure they were.
“Where are we?”
“Coming up on the K Seven Forty-nine System.” She had a huge bruise on the side of her face, the makeup that had been on her eyes streaked black with the residue of tears of pain. She wore a yellow thermal suit over her clothing, the cowl pushed back and her pale hair floating loose around her face. “We’ve picked up a signal.”
Luke breathed deep—at the cost of a certain amount of nausea—and worked on channeling the Force to the center of the worst pain and dizziness in his head. He couldn’t remember how good a pilot Nichos was, but he knew Cray had no experience in it at all. If they were going to make Pzob alive he’d better be in shape to take the ship down.
“I thought there was nothing out here. From Pzob?”
“K Seven Forty-nine Three, yes.”
Luke had completely stopped cussing at petty misfortunes round about the time he’d lost his right hand—after he’d realized he’d aborted and imperiled his own training as a Jedi, betrayed his Master, and put himself in deadly danger of succumbing to the dark side for no purpose whatsoever, his perspective on minor annoyances had changed. He only sighed now, letting his worry run off, and asked, “Imperial?” If the base in the asteroid field was an Imperial one it stood to reason.
“The data section of the computer’s out,” said Cray. “I’ve got the navicomp back on line from the backups but that took every coupling that wasn’t burned out by that last power surge. Can you recognize Imperial signals by internal code?”
“Some of them.” He reached over—carefully—to strip free the straps that held a silvery thermal blanket around him, while Cray unfastened the restraining straps that held him in place. He was, he saw, in the aft crew room as he’d thought. The lighting came from a single emergency glowpanel in the ceiling, but it was sufficient to enable him to see his breath.
“Here you are, Master Luke.” Threepio floated across to him from the lockers on the opposite wall, holding out a t-suit and an oxygen filter mask. “I’m so gratified to see you conscious and well.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.” Even the small movement necessary to get himself into the t-suit made him queasy, and despite all the channeling of healing he could do, his head still throbbed agonizingly. He took the filter mask and glanced inquiringly at Cray.
“The coolant lines ruptured. We got a mask on you as fast as we could but there was a while there we thought you were a goner.”
He touched the back of his head, and was immediately sorry. Whatever he’d struck—or whatever flying debris had struck him—had raised a lump approximately the size of t
he smaller of Coruscant’s moons.
“I salvaged as much of the battle readouts as I could.” Cray slipped on her own filter mask and followed him across the crew room to the door. “There are some stills, a little footage that I can’t get to run, and a half dozen computer extrapolations of what I think are the site of the attack, but the system’s too damaged for me to get any kind of clear picture of which asteroid it is. When we make port and I can salvage the data I’ll be able to tell you more.” She pushed aside a drifting logpad and a couple of spare filter masks as they entered the short hallway. Though spacegoing vessels as a rule kept to a minimum objects that weren’t strapped or magnetized down, there were always some: comlinks, stylos, coffee mugs, logpads, empty drink bubbles, and data wafers.
The bridge was even colder than the crew room, and murky with pinkish coolant gas. Nichos had lashed himself to the safety bolts on the edge of the main console itself; the chair Luke had been sitting in was tied to a handhold on the far wall, having been ripped loose from its moorings by the impact that had torn Luke out of its harness. The lights had gone completely in here, and only the chalky starlight from the main viewport illuminated the room. Feral red or blinking amber power lights glinted like strange jewels in reflection from the silvery droid’s arms and back.
“The signal we’re picking up from Pzob isn’t strong enough to reach into the Moonflower Nebula,” reported Nichos, as Luke pulled himself close with a floating remnant of the safety-harness strap. “Look familiar?”
Luke checked the readout on the single screen left functional. “Not any Imperial signal I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Which doesn’t mean that whoever’s sending it isn’t allied with one or another of the warlords.” It was odd, and a little disconcerting, to see Nichos without either mask or t-suit in what was rapidly becoming a frozen and depressurized coffin.
Star Wars: Children of the Jedi Page 5
